Satellite-five

The statistics of the Ministry of Health on vaccination seems to be five times high, if we count separately by "vaccinated" regions. The numbers are monitored by the marketer Alexander Dragon

The other day, the Minister of Health of the Russian Federation, Mikhail Murashko, announced that in Russia since the beginning of a large-scale vaccination campaign against the Covid-19, 1.6 million doses of the Russian Vaccine “Sputnik V” were released into civilian circulation. A few days earlier, his department announced one and a half million vaccinated, while the previous reports on the supply of the vaccine showed that at that time there were more than 100 thousand “free” doses in the regions, and in practice the regions suspended vaccination due to the deficiency of the drug. All this was followed by the marketer Alexander Dragan. According to him, the Ministry of Health multiplies its numbers by about five.

- Alexander, why did you decide to check for the Ministry of Health data on vaccinations? You don't trust them?

- I was somewhat confused by the number of vaccinated, which is reported by different sources:

The numbers do not beat.

I observe the dynamics of vaccination by regions, and, for example, in Moscow, as of December 22, 25 thousand people were vaccinated, in recent days - about 50 thousand people. And on January 1, the Minister of Health Mikhail Murashko announces that 800 thousand people were blossomed in the whole country. At the same time, in the following people in the scale of the constituent entities of the Federation, there were no Moscow volumes following the scale. Petersburg at that time did not reach a thousand vaccinated per day on average, by the end of December a little more than six thousand people were vaccinated there. Observation of smaller regions in the same way showed that there are no tens of thousands of vaccinated anywhere. For example, in the Omsk region, whose population is two million people, by the end of December 1642 people were vaccinated, in the Samara region with a population of more than 3 million - 3,500 people.

- You want to say that if you make numbers from the regions, then it does not work out a half million, which the Ministry of Health announced after the holidays?

- First, by January 2, 800 thousand did not work out. A week later we are told - already one and a half million. At the end of December, I collected data on 67 regions, which account for almost 90 percent of the country's population. It turned out 156 thousand vaccinated. The remaining regions, based on the population, gave extrapolation of 15–20 thousand. That is, from the beginning of the declared vaccination, until the end of 2020, only 170-180 thousand people were instilled.

-The difference is about four to five times. Then, as your observations, such a coefficient remained?

- Repeatedly I collected data immediately after the holidays. Then it was possible to get information in 44 regions, which account for 59 percent of the population. By the end of the holidays, it turned out that 111 thousand people were vaccinated there.

The extrapolation of these regions plus separate calculations in Moscow gave an estimate of approximately 280–290 thousand. And we were announced, as you know, about one and a half million.

That is, the coefficient has even increased.

- What are your sources of information except official? Do you have the opportunity to receive verified data?

- I don’t have any insidies, I rely exclusively on open data: reports of regional Ministry of Health and Operasty, local media.

- And some open official data in total do not fight with others - also open and official?

- That's right.

- As a marketer, what can you explain the mismatch of numbers in open sources?

- Different explanations are possible here. Starting, I would call it so, with conspiracyological: we are dealing with inaccurate data, the numbers that we call us are not related to reality.

- But we immediately mention this implausible version, because we believe our government, these people cannot lie.

- Certainly. Therefore, I said that this is a conspiracy version. It is possible that it was actually not about vaccinated, but about the amount of doses of the vaccine released into civilian circulation.

- Then how to explain that in the regions, with the data that you call, vaccination was interrupted? In St. Petersburg, for example, a record was suspended in clinics.

- Exactly! There is one more

It seems to be the most logical explanation: in parallel there is a large -scale vaccination of people who do not fall into the Ministry of Health reports.

- The military, for example.

- Yes, this is primarily the army. And the army is really actively vaccinated. But this version is not suitable, because hundreds of thousands of vaccinated are not gaining in the army. That is, initially there were plans for vaccination of 100 thousand military personnel before the end of the year, and the news that 100 thousand people received vaccinations in the army, appeared the other day, in mid -January. That is, there are lagging behind the plans.

- In any case, it also does not really add up to one and a half million.

- It turns out 300 thousand on regional reports plus 100 thousand in the army. And somewhere we are lost about 1.1 million. It could be assumed that they add something cadets of military universities and schools, but they, according to official information, are not instilled at all. There was news that they would begin to vaccinate at the end of January. It is more difficult with other groups, because there is little open information. According to the Russian Guard, there was only information that they began to vaccinate on December 12, but there was no data on volumes and pace. There were only episodic news from the regions that two hundred fighters were instilled somewhere somewhere. However, we know that about 300-400 thousand people serve in the Russian Guard.

We still do not have up to one and a half million.

Separately, probably, you can add doctors who were instilled even before the start of large -scale vaccination. Here I managed to find only the following figures: 45-50 thousand doctors as of mid -November. But we know that so far in some regions, not all doctors are vaccinated even in infectious diseases. For example, in 2020, Kaliningrad received only 1042 doses of the vaccine and used it all. The new party was expected in early January and were going to be directed primarily to the vaccination of doctors in red zones. But the vaccine really came, judging by the media reports, only at the end of the holidays.

-Is it possible to explain the difference by the fact that you still do not have the data in all regions, but only 44 subjects of the Federation plus Moscow?

- That is, in 44 regions 300 thousand people are vaccinated, and in the rest - a million? It doesn't seem relevant to me. If we considered only the most remote regions or the least wealthy, we could assume that most of the vaccinated just in the rest. But I examined different subjects.

• By January 14, 140 thousand people were vaccinated in Moscow.

• In total, 44 regions for the 11th-111 thousand.

• There is data on St. Petersburg for January 11 - 13.6 thousand people.

• In the Moscow region - 17 thousand.

• In the Krasnodar Territory - 7.2 thousand.

• In the Sverdlovsk region - 8 thousand.

But among those regions that I was able to take into account, very different are evenly represented - with a population of 200 thousand people in Altai to 7.5 million in the Moscow region. That is, the sample is quite representative, it covers two -thirds of the country.

If you still assume that the remaining regions account for 4/5 of the entire vaccine in the country, then it is completely incomprehensible why they do not report about vaccination. Others even report on successes that look rather sad. On January 1, the Novgorod region opened a vaccination entry through the “State Services”, by January 11 she reported: a thousand and a small person signed up, five were vaccinated on the first day.

- The vaccine is produced not only in Moscow, where reporting is collected. There are factories in St. Petersburg, Yaroslavl, Bashkiria. Maybe a certain number of doses goes immediately to the regions closest to the plant, so not everyone falls into the reporting?

- All data are taken into account centrally. In addition, the logistics is such that the vaccine is produced at the factory, then it is delivered to the warehouse in the suburbs, and from there it goes into circulation throughout the country. For example, the Biocad plant producing the vaccine is located in St. Petersburg. From there, the bottles go to the central warehouse, and from there Petersburg already gets them.

- The vaccine must be transported at a temperature not exceeding –18.5 degrees, it is difficult and expensive. And you want to say that it is released in Ufa, then they are taken to the Moscow Region to the warehouse, and from the warehouse back to the same Ufa?

- Open data confirm such logistics.

Accordingly, this is another narrow place, if we talk about the volume of vaccination. It slows down very much.

- Why is vaccination in Russia so slowly? This is due to the complexity of the procedure or to vaccinate with people's unwillingness?

- Here I see two aspects. Most regions have a problem with the complexity of access to the vaccine, most people do not have the opportunity to vaccinate. But this, like production and logistics, is solved, I have no doubt that sooner or later they will be resolved. A much more significant reason: the reluctance of people to vaccinate. She, in turn, breaks up into several problems. The first is the overall growth of anti -precipitory sentiments and the appearance of various kinds of conspiracy theories. The second is the distrust of people in a particular vaccine, the speed of its development and the early completion of the tests. That is, to everything that was surrounded by the release of the "satellite". At first, Russia announced that the first in the world registered the vaccine from coronavirus, then - that we were the first to begin large -scale vaccination, although all this is not so.

- So now on the TV you will see: “Sputnik” is the world's first registered vaccine from coronavirus. Most people are unlikely to learn from somewhere that this is not true, that is not the first in the world. Where did they get distrust?

- This is not the point that people have no sources of reliable information. They just see that the Russian vaccine became not a way of strengthening health and the fight against the epidemic, but by a foreign policy to strengthen our prestige. Allegedly, therefore, you can go to a reduction in testing.

- So what? President Putin recently announced that the Russian vaccine is the best in the world. Doesn't Putin believe?

- At the same time, Putin himself has not yet been vaccinated.

- Oh, that's the matter!

- This can also be a factor causing distrust. In any case, I would not bring it to any one reason, there is a whole ball of reasons, one is layered on the other. Starting with general conspiracy ideas.

- What are they chipped through an injection?

- Well, I would not mention such marginal. For example - that coronavirus is not more dangerous than ordinary flu. I have surrounded not only Muscovites who question any numbers, but also friends who prefer the first channel of television to all the media. So in their midst confidence in the Russian vaccine is less than in a conditional liberal party.

- Please explain this phenomenon. Why are people who are critical to the state, go and are instilled with a “satellite”, and the conditional viewers who voted for the ground are not in any?

- It’s one thing to vote in the elections, and another thing is your own health, you won’t just trust it.

Here people seem to believe in the state, but for some reason they have no great trust in Russian vehicles.

In addition, people, in principle, poorly understand the action of vaccines, and there is a distrust of this, as I have already said, also due to the development rate. The person does not understand how it could be safe, which has been so quickly bungled.

- If people were offered to be vaccinated with an import vaccine, would they go more willingly?

- I think that more than the people from the same conditional liberal party would go behind the imported vaccine. But most people do not trust not only the Russian drug, but the vaccine as such. In this sense, Pfizer or the "satellite" of one field of the berry. In addition, there is one more point: in the official media there is a campaign to highlight specific facts regarding foreign vaccines. In the press, there are constantly reports of dozens of side effects from them.

-Yes, 25 people died “after vaccination” and so on in Norway.

- Exactly. Some media, who consider themselves conscientious, add: "After - does not mean due to."

But in general, the task here, apparently, is such that people learn: a foreign pfizer is bad, the Russian "satellite" is good,

I have not met just such messages about him. And in the memory of the consumer of the news, another is fixed: a person is vaccinated against coronavirus-and died. From the memory is erased, a person died after a “pfizer” or “satellite”.

- You yourself noticed that there are no such messages about the “satellite”. Maybe the government is correctly entering, reporting one and a half million successfully vaccinated? As a purely marketing move, this should stimulate the masses vaccinated.

- And this is also one of my assumptions. Even if we assume that one and a half million are obviously inaccurate numbers, they are needed for this effect: they say, see how many people were vaccinated - and nothing bad happened to them. At the same time, the “deficiency effect” may occur: sooner, a half, one and a half million, there is not enough vaccine-you need to vaccinate while they are given.

-Someone has already put forward such an idea: it was necessary not to promote the vaccine, but to let a rumor that it is extremely difficult to get it. It was then that the man who remembers the USSR would run.

- And this is possible.

- Why don't the authorities enter the vaccine just like the elections? We put the state employees on the bus and take the vaccination.

- In Russia, in principle, a low level of trust in vaccines, one of the lowest in the world. The Lancet magazine had a large -scale study on this topic. They studied 149 countries of the world for four years, 284 thousand adults were included in the sample. And in Russia, only 23% of people consider vaccines safe. Less than a quarter of the population. Regarding specifically, the “satellite” hundreds of questions separately show people's mass unprecedentedness. At the end of December, VTsIOM reported that only 38% of Russians are going to get involved from Covid, FOM has 42% numbers. This is almost the worst indicator in the world.

Therefore, I will not be surprised if at some point the authorities really decides to turn on the admin resource. It would be just a nightmare solution

Because it will entail an even greater increase in anti -infection.

- When people are taken by buses to the polls - they vote as ordered. And here they will be scared by the Admin resource?

- Because here we are talking about their own health.

- I realized that a lot of mistakes have been made in the promotion of the “satellite”. How can they be fixed? What could the state do so that the vaccine is still believed and entered? Scientists say that she is good.

- There are several directions, the very first and important is a personal example.

- How is Catherine the Great, who vaccinated against smallpox in much less enlightened times?

- Yes, but not only. When people have close and acquaintances who vaccinated, and nothing bad happened to them, such a positive example can also influence. The second point - educational work is needed. It is necessary to explain why you should not be afraid that the vaccine is created so quickly. Why do not wait for terrible deferred side effects like cancer in five years. In addition, transparency and honesty are necessary in everything that concerns not only the vaccine itself, but also the general course of vaccination.

- Judging by the original theme of our conversation, “transparency” is not the strongest quality of the promoters of the “satellite”.

- Yes, there is a shaft of contradicting each other and, conversely, confusing the observer of numbers. And this also works for a common distrust of the vaccine. That is, the distrust of the vaccine and distrust of vaccination forms in a person in a common lump, and this affects his readiness to go to vaccinate.

- About the enlightenment: do you seriously believe that this will work? That is, the guest -shaped, which educational will be explained how good the vaccine will suddenly be believed?

- I think that this could work in the right world, with proper communication, with the right approach from the state.

- Yes, but some of these "enlighteners" have been caught more than once on a lie.

- Therefore, I poorly believe that the enlightenment will work with us.

- The other day, the first phase of registration of the Russian “satellite” begins in the European Union. If the vaccine is recognized in the EU, will this contribute to trust in it in Russia?

- This will definitely contribute to trust. That is, he will show that yes, there are questions for the test procedure in Russia, not everything was perfect here, but in general the product is good.